Ruby M. Ayres

". . . the leaves are curled apart.

Still red as from the broken heart,

And here's the naked stem of thorns."

THE game stopped abruptly, and between them Chris and Feathers carried Marie from the room. "It was the smoke, and the heat!" Atkins kept saying in distress. He felt angry with himself for not having noticed how pale she looked. "It was jolly hot! It was the smoke and stuffiness. It'' an ordinary faint, isn't it?"

Nobody took any notice of him, or answered him, but he kept on talking all the same. He was young and impressionable, and he thought Marie was altogether charming. He was thankful when at last her lashes fluttered and she opened her eyes.

Feathers, who was bending over her, moved away, and Chris came forward.

"Better?" he asked. "It was the hot room; I'll take you upstairs. It's all right, you only fainted."

Only fainted! Years afterwards he remembered the passionate look in her brown eyes as she raised them to his face, and wondered what her thoughts had been. Perhaps he would have understood a great deal of what she was suffering if he had known that the wild words trembling on her lips were:

"I wish I could have died! I would like to have died!"

Feathers picked up her gloves and fan, which had fallen to the floor. His ugly face was commiserating as he looked at her.

"The room was very stuffy. It was inconsiderate of us to let you be 26 there, Mrs. Lawless. I am afraid it was my fault!"

His fault. Everything was his fault, she told herself bitterly, as she turned away. And yet—surely it was better to know now the true facts of her marriage than to learn them later on—when it was too late.

A bachelor husband. How infinitely funny it was! She looked at Chris as he walked with her to the stairs. His eyes were concerned, but as he had said, she had "only fainted," and a faint was nothing. She wondered if he would have cared had she been dead.

He slipped a hand through her arm to steady her.

"I am afraid it was all my fault," he said. "You told me you were tired. I'm sorry, Marie Celeste."

Her lip quivered at the sound of the two little names. Nobody but Chris ever called her that, and she turned her head away.

"I'll fetch one of the maids to look after you," he said, as they reached her room. He turned away, but she called him back.

"Chris, I want to speak to you."

"Well?" He followed her into the room. A pretty room it was the best in the hotel, and the very new silver brushes and trinkets which Aunt Madge had given her for a wedding present were laid out on the dressing-table.

When she had dressed there for dinner only two hours ago she had been the happiest girl in the world, but now . . . a long, shuddering sigh broke from her lips.

Chris was looking at her anxiously. He was worried by her pallor, and sorry she had fainted, but he quite realized that there was nothing serious in a faint. Some women made it a habit, he believed, and he was anxious to get back and finish that game of billiards!

"What do you want to say to me?" he asked. "Won't it do presently?"

She shook her head.

"No."

She was standing by the dressing-table, nervously fingering a 27 little silver box, and for a moment she could not speak, then she said in desperation:

"Chris—I want to tell you—I know all about our Wedding!"

He echoed her words blankly.

"You know all about it. You funny kid! I suppose you do. Why——"

He stopped, struck by something in her eyes.

"What do you mean, Marie Celeste?"

She turned round and faced him squarely. "I mean—I know why you married me," she said.

"Why?" The hot blood rushed to his face. "Who told you?" he asked sharply.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Does that matter? I—just found out. And I—I wanted to say that . . . that it doesn't matter. I—I think it was quite right of you."

He looked rather puzzled, then he smiled.

"Oh, well—if you think it's right." He hesitated, and drew a step nearer to her. "Who told you, Marie?" he asked. "Aunt Madge agreed with me that there was no need for you to know."

She pushed the soft hair back from her forehead. So Aunt Madge had been willing to deceive her as well. That hurt. Somehow she had always believed in Aunt Madge.

She managed a smile.

"What does it matter? I only thought it was better we should start by—by not having any secrets. We—we've always been good friends, haven't we?" Friends! When she adored him.

"Of course!" He gave his agreement readily, and a sharp pain touched her heart. It was only friendship, then—on his side, at least. She knew how much she had longed for him to wipe out that word and substitute another.

There was a little silence, then Chris said again: "Marie—is there anything the matter? You look—somehow you look—different!"

28 He walked up to her, and laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Look at me," he said.

She raised her eyes obediently.

"Now tell me what is the matter!" he demanded. "There is something you are keeping from me! I haven't known you all these years for nothing, you know, Marie Celeste."

There was a little laughing note of tenderness in his voice, and for a moment the girl swayed in his grasp.

If only she could put her arms round his neck and lay her head on his breast and tell him the truth, the whole wretched truth of what she had heard! Even if he did not love her, it would be such exquisite relief to unburden her heart to him, but she did not dare!

Chris had always hated what he called "scenes." Years ago, when they were both children, tears had been the last means whereby to win his sympathy or admiration. He liked a girl to be a "sport" he had always been nicest to her when she could take a knock without flinching under the pain.

She remembered that now—forced herself to remember it, and nothing else, as she raised her eyes to his.

"Yes—what is it?" he urged. "Don't be afraid! It's all right, whatever it is, I promise you."

Twice her lips moved, but no words would come, and then with a rush of desperation she faltered:

"It's only—it's only . . . you said just now—we had always been good friends . . ."

"Did I?" he laughed. "I was rather under the impression that it was you who said that, but never mind. Go on!"

"Well—well . . . Can't we go on . . . just being good friends?— just only being good friends, I mean."

He did not answer, though it was not possible to mistake her meaning, and in the silence that followed it seemed to Marie that every hope she had cherished was throbbing away with each agonized heart beat. Then his hands fell slowly from her shoulders.

"You mean—that you don't care for me?"

29 She almost cried out at the tone of his voice. That he tried to make it property hurt and amazed, she knew, but her heart told her that his one great emotion was an overwhelming relief. That he had no intention of even paying her the compliment of discussion.

Her lips felt like ice as she answered him in a whisper.

"No—" And the silence came again before Chris said constrainedly:

"Very well—it shall be as you wish—of course!"

He waited a moment, but she did not speak, and he turned to the door. "Good-night, Marie Celeste."

"Good-night."

The door opened, and after a moment she heard it shut again softly, and the sound of his footsteps dying away down the corridor.

That nobody should know, that nobody should ever guess, was the one feverish thought in Marie's brain as she lay awake through the long night, listening to the sound of the waves on the shore, and trying to make some sort of plans for the future.

To behave as if nothing were the matter, as if she were quite happy. An impossible task it seemed, and yet she meant to do it. She would not further alienate Chris by scenes and tears.

If he did not care for her she would not let him think that it worried her. Surely, if she were brave and turned a smiling face to a world that had suddenly grown so empty something good would come out of it all. Some small reward would creep out of the blackness that enveloped her.

Though she knew it was unjust in her heart she laid all the trouble at Dakers' door—"Feathers," as Chris and young Atkins called him. She thought of his ugly, kindly face as she lay there in the darkness, and silently hated him. She would never be able to like him, she would never be able to forgive him. But for him and his carelessly spoken words . . . and then she hid her face in the pillow, and for the first time the tears came. What was the use of blaming him when the blame was not his? How could he help it that Chris did not love her? What was it to do with him if Chris had 30 seen fit to marry her in order to get her father's money?

It was fate, that was all. A cruel fate that had drawn a line through her happiness almost before the word had been written.

It hurt unbearably to think that Aunt Madge had known all the time. Marie clenched her hands as she recalled the old lady's whispered good-bye:

"God bless you and make you very happy!"

How could she have said such a thing—knowing what she knew?

"I will be happy, I will," the girl told herself over and over again. After all, there were other things in the world besides love.

She got up early, long before the other people in the hotel were astir, and went out and down to the sands.

It was a lovely morning, warm and sunny, and the tide was out, leaving a long wet stretch of golden sand behind.

A boy with bare, brown legs was pushing his way through the little waves with a shrimping net, and further along a man was strolling by the water's edge, idly picking up pebbles and throwing them into the sea.

Marie walked on, the fresh breeze blowing through her hair and fanning her tired face.

Only two months ago and she had been a girl at school, with her hair down her back and not a care in the world save an occasional heartache when she thought of Chris. Only two months! She felt as if she had taken a great spring across the gulf dividing girlhood from womanhood, and was looking back across it now with regretful eyes.

Why had she been in such a hurry to grow up? She understood for the first time what Aunt Madge and other grown-up people meant when they said that they looked upon their school days as the happiest of their lives.

"Are mine going to be the happiest?" Marie thought. Even they had not been very happy. She had never been very popular at school, and she had never been clever. Her lessons had always worried her, and she never quite got over het first feeling of homesickness as the 31 other girls did.

"You're too sentimental, too romantic!" so her best friend, Dorothy Webber, had often told her. "If you don't cure yourself, my dear, you'll find a lot of trouble waiting for you in the future."

She had found it already, sooner even than Dorothy had dreamed.

She looked down at her hand with its new wedding ring, and a little blush rose to her pale cheeks.

"He's mine, at any rate," she told herself fiercely. "Even if he doesn't love me, he is my husband, and nobody else can have him."

It was some sort of comfort to know that the adored Chris was hers. The knowledge sent some streak of sunshine across the blackness of last night.

She strolled along restlessly, blind to the beauty of the sea and sky, lost in her own bruised, bewildered thoughts. She had passed the boy with the shrimping net, and had come abreast with the man sauntering at the water's edge without noticing it, until he spoke to her.

"Good morning, Mrs. Lawless."

She started, flushing painfully as her eyes met the kindly quizzical gaze of "Feathers."

He looked uglier than ever in the morning sunshine, was her first bitter thought, and he wore a loose, collarless shirt which was open at the neck and showed his thick, muscular throat.

His big feet were thrust into not over-clean white canvas shoes, and a damp towel and bathing costume hung inelegantly over one shoulder.

"Good morning," said Marie. "I thought I was the first one up," she added resentfully.

He laughed carelessly.

"I'm always up with the lark—or aren't there any larks at a place like this? I've had a dip—I like the sea to myself, before it's crowded with flappers and fat old ladies."

"Perhaps they prefer it, too," said Marie. The words had escaped 32 her almost before she was aware of it, and she flushed hotly, ashamed of her rudeness.

But "Feathers" only laughed.

"I knew you didn't like me," he said in friendly fashion. "I could read it in your eyes last night."

She was nonplussed by his frankness.

"I can't like you or dislike you," she said after a moment. "I don't know anything about you."

"I know you don't," he agreed calmly. "But you think you do! And that's where you are mistaken! If you take my advice, Mrs. Lawless, you'll make a friend of me."

She stared at him with growing indignation.

"Why, whatever for?" she asked blankly. She had never been spoken to in such a manner before.

Feathers laughed again, and ran his fingers through his unruly hair.

"Well, for one thing, I'm your husband's best friend," he said sententiously. "And I always think it's policy for a woman to keep in with her husband's best friend. What do you think?"

There was nothing but friendliness in his voice and words, but they angered Marie.

"My husband's friends don't interest me in the least," she said untruthfully.

Feathers stooped and picked up another smooth pebble, with which he skillfully skimmed the surface of the sea half a dozen times.

"That's a pity," he said. "And sounds as if you are very young." He looked down at her. "How old are you?" he asked interestedly.

She ignored the last question. Her eyes were indignant as she answered: "It may sound as if I am very young, but it also sounds as if you are very rude and inquisitive."

His dark face flushed.

"I beg your pardon. I hadn't the least intention of being either rude or inquisitive," he said hastily. "I should like to be friends with you. As a rule, I've no use for women any more than . . ." He stopped abruptly, biting his lip, but Marie knew that he had been 33 going to add, "Any more than Chris has."

There was a little silence.

"Have you got any brothers?" he asked abruptly. "No, of course, I know you haven't. Well, why not look upon me as a sort of big brother?" His eyes were upon her again; kind eyes they were beneath their shaggy brows.

Marie gave a forced little laugh.

"Thank you; I don't want a brother."

"Not now, of course," he agreed. "But we never know what we may want in this queer old world, and brothers can be very useful things at times, you know."

She did not answer. She thought he was the strangest man she had ever met.

"We ought to be turning back," he said presently, "It's nearly nine o'clock, and we're some way from the hotel."

She walked reluctantly beside him.

Suddenly she asked a question.

"If you are Chris' best friend, why weren't you his best man at—at our wedding?"

She looked up at him as she spoke, and saw the quick frown that crossed his face.

"Am I to answer that question?" he asked.

"Of course. I should like to know."

"Very well, then, as you insist—Chris asked me to be best man, or whatever you call it, and I refused."

"Why?" She was really interested now.

"Why? Well, because—before I saw you—I disliked the idea of Chris being married. Marriage spoils most friendships between men."

Marie looked out over the sea with wistful eyes.

"I don't think marriage will spoil Chris' friendships," she said, with faint bitterness.

"No," he agreed, "I am afraid it will not."

There was a queer, hard note of disapproval in his voice, and Marie looked at him in bewilderment.

"I don't think I understand you," she said angrily. "I don't think I understand a bit what you mean."

34 "Perhaps I don't understand myself." he answered. "Let's leave it at that, shall we, and forget all the nonsense I've been talking?"

They went up to the hotel silently. There were several people about now and a smartly-dressed woman with red hair, to whom Feathers bowed formally, stared at Marie rather insolently as they passed.

"Is that one of Chris' friends?" Marie asked with an effort when they were out of hearing.

"Chris knows her," was the reply. "She is a Mrs. Heriot."

"She is very smart," Marie said wistfully.

"Smart!" Feathers stopped and looked back at the woman deliberately. "Do you call her smart?" he asked, mildly amazed. "I think she looks a sight; but, then, so do most of the women in this hotel. I suppose it's their way of attracting attention—all others failing."

Marie smiled faintly.

"You don't like women," she said.

He shook his shaggy head.

"I do not," he agreed.

"And yet—just now, you told me I should be wise to make a friend of you."

"I did—and I still mean it, and hope some day that you will do so . . . Here is Chris."

Chris came towards them with a batch of newspapers in his hands. He looked at his wife with faint embarrassment.

"Early birds!" he said, and then, as Feathers moved away. "Is your head better, Marie Celeste?"

She smiled nervously.

"Oh, yes, it's quite gone! I got up early and had a long walk along the sands, and I met Mr. Dakers and he came back with me."

"Call him 'Feathers,'" said Chris. "Everybody does."

"Do they? But I hardly know him!"

"You soon will." He looked at her doubtfully. "Do you think you will manage to have a good time here, Marie?"

35 "Oh, yes, with . . . " "With you," she had been going to add, but stopped. She felt instinctively that she would not be allowed to have much of her husband's undivided attention. There were so many people in the hotel who were friends of his.

"There is a Mrs. Heriot here who knows you," she said, more for something to say than for any other reason, and she was surprised at the way Chris suddenly flushed.

"Yes, I know," he said. "I saw her last night."

They went in to breakfast together. Marie thought she had never seen such a big room. She kept close to Chris, conscious that all eyes were upon her.

Feathers and young Atkins occupied a table a little way from theirs, and Atkins got up as soon as he saw Marie, and came over to ask how she was.

"I'm quite well, thank you, and isn't it a lovely morning?"

"Ripping! I say, can you swim?"

"Yes."

Chris looked up. "Can you?" he asked in surprise, then laughed and colored, realizing how very little he really knew about Marie and her accomplishments.

"I wish people wouldn't stare at me so," she said to him nervously, when breakfast was over and they were out in the lounge once more. "Is there anything funny-looking about me, Chris?"

He cast a casual eye over her daintiness.

"You look all right," he said, without much enthusiasm. "Probably they know we're newly married." he added.

Marie said nothing, but she turned away from him and looked out over the sea, a little wintry smile on her quivering lips.

He was quite indifferent to her, she knew! And in her passionate pain and bitterness she almost wished for his hatred. Anything, anything rather than this terrible feeling that she was nothing at all in his life!

Young Atkins joined them almost immediately and attached himself to Marie.

36 "We're going to bathe presently." he said. "You'll come, too, won't you?"

Marie looked at her husband, but he was talking to someone else, and she answered hurriedly.

"Oh, yes, I'll come, of course! What time are you going?"

"We generally go about half-past ten—before the crowd gets down. We'll take a boat out if you're sure you can swim."

She laughed. "Why, of course, I can!"

"Let your breakfast settle first, my boy," said Feathers, looking up from his newspaper. "There's no hurry, is there?"

"Oh, shut up!" said young Atkins lightly. "You're always such an old croaker."

At half-past ten he sought Marie out again.

"Are you coming?" he asked. "It'll be topping this Morning."

"I know—Chris has gone to phone to someone. I wonder if I ought to wait . . ."

"Of course not! He'll be all right! Leave a message."

"Very well." It would be a good opportunity to show him that she did not depend on him for her amusement she thought desperately. She went off through the sunshine with young Atkins chattering nineteen to the dozen beside her.

It was a perfect morning! Marie stood for a moment on the steps of the bathing machine in her blue and white costume, and looked up at the sun! It might be such a perfect world if only things were a little different! She wondered if there was always something in life to prevent people being too happy.

Young Atkins called to her from a diving stage a little distance out, and she dived into the water and swam out to him.

"Ripping, isn't it!" he said as she clambered up to sit beside him in the sun "Look here! I'll race you round that buoy and back. Will you?"

"Yes—I'll bet you a box of cigarettes I win."

37 "Right! Bet you a box of chocolates you don't. Now then—one, two, three! Go!" They dived from the staging together, laughing and full of excitement. They were both good swimmers, and for a little they kept abreast, then slowly but surely young Atkins forged ahead.

Marie felt rather tired. They were swimming towards the sun and its brightness blinded her. Her headache had returned, too; she had almost forgotten it until a little stabbing pain in her temples made her close her eyes.

She thought it must be because she had not slept all night! That would account for her feeling of weakness and lassitude. She ought not to have come out so far—sudden panic closed about her heart— she tried to call to the boy ahead of her, but a little wave broke in her face and carried her voice away. She thought that she screamed—she was quite sure that she screamed aloud in terror before someone put out the sunshine and blotted out the world, leaving only miles and miles of clear, green water, into which she sank slowly down . . .

38